The UK’s property tax system isn’t just outdated – it’s unjust. For decades, both Labour and Conservative governments have tiptoed around reform, content to manage a broken status quo rather than fix it. The thing is, the country didn’t vote for continuity at the last election. It voted for change.
And yet, when it comes to the core issues of fairness – how we fund our local services, how we tax homes, and how we unlock housing mobility – the silence has been deafening.
Peter Sagar’s recent article in North East Bylines captures a frustration that many feel across the country: that a Labour government should be doing more to deliver on the promise of economic justice. We couldn’t agree more.
Council Tax Reform Can’t Wait Any Longer
Council tax is one of the most regressive taxes in Britain. Based on property values from 1991, it places a heavier burden on people living in modest homes than those in mansions. A terraced house in Sunderland often pays more, proportionally, than a townhouse in Westminster.
Sagar points to the administrative complexity of the system – exemptions, discounts, income-based reductions, confusing application processes – which create more work for councils and more confusion for residents. That bureaucracy isn’t just inefficient. It’s unfair.
We have long argued that this system is beyond repair. It’s time to replace council tax with a modern, proportionate tax based on what your home is actually worth today. That’s the only way to ensure people contribute fairly – and that communities have a stable, transparent way to fund essential services.
Stamp Duty Locks Up the Housing Market
Stamp duty is the silent handbrake on Britain’s housing system. It punishes movement. It discourages downsizing. It adds thousands of pounds in cost to buyers already squeezed by deposits and mortgage rates.
As Sagar argues more broadly, it’s not enough for this government to tweak around the edges. Real reform means rethinking the way we raise revenue from housing – not just applying new coats of paint to tired systems.
Fairer Share’s proposal is simple: scrap stamp duty and council tax, and introduce a single, proportional property tax based on real property values. One system, one payment: fair across the board.
If You Want to Beat the Far Right, Start With Fairness
There’s another reason this matters. When people feel the system is rigged, they don’t always turn to better ideas – they turn to louder ones.
Sagar is right to warn that a failure to deliver tangible economic fairness risks fuelling resentment and disillusionment – the same conditions that far-right movements thrive on. Council tax is a perfect case study: a tax that hits the poorest hardest, is impossible to understand, and has no credible justification for the way it’s calculated.
People see a neighbour in a bigger home paying less. They see millionaires avoiding stamp duty with loopholes. They see public services shrinking while their bills go up. And when no mainstream party fixes it, that anger gets redirected – often at the wrong targets.
A proportional property tax would not only be fairer; it would be legible. It would show that government still works in the interests of ordinary people. And it would start to rebuild the trust that extremists feed on when they claim “nothing ever changes.”
Fairer taxation is a political strategy, not just a policy fix.
The North Deserves More Than Rhetoric
Sagar rightly highlights Preston’s community wealth-building model as a beacon of practical, localised reform. But this approach needs funding. It needs local authorities to have the financial tools to shape their communities – not rely on year-to-year begging bowls and arbitrary settlements.
Reforming property tax isn’t just a technical fix. It’s a pathway to giving regions like the North East the control they need, and the investment they’ve been denied for far too long.
If Not Now, When?
It’s easy to blame the previous government for the mess. And yes, after 14 years of political instability, inconsistency and service cuts, Labour has inherited a daunting challenge.
But the longer it waits, the more this opportunity slips away.
Fairer Share believes that property tax reform is the low-hanging fruit. It’s popular. It’s logical. It’s overdue. And it would show millions of people that this government is willing to take bold decisions – not just preserve the old ones.